[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 71 (Wednesday, April 26, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2545-S2547]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                 Gulf of Mexico Oil Drilling Moratorium

  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I want to address the Senate on the 
occasion of the solemn memorial of 7 years since the Deepwater Horizon 
explosion and the resulting oilspill, where 11 workmen were tragically 
killed.
  The oilspill fouled the sensitive gulf ecosystem in ways that we 
still do not fully realize. Yet we are hearing today that the President 
is expected to issue an Executive order this week that ignores the 
implications of that tragedy, which was also the largest environmental 
disaster in U.S. history, by blindly encouraging more drilling in very 
sensitive areas.
  I can tell you that drilling off the coast of Florida's neighboring 
States poses a real threat to our State's environment and our 
multibillion-dollar tourism industry, and that is because a spill off 
the coast of Louisiana can end up on the beaches of northwest Florida, 
just like a spill off the coast of Virginia or South Carolina can 
affect the entire Atlantic coast.
  BP, as a result of Deepwater Horizon, agreed to pay more than $20 
billion in penalties to clean up the 2010 oilspill and repay gulf 
residents for lost revenue. But, apparently, that wasn't enough, if 
BP's recent spill in Alaska is any indication.
  So we shouldn't be surprised, since oil companies and their friends 
have fought against any new safety standards or requirements, that the 
President still wants to open up additional waters to drilling, despite 
the fact that we haven't applied the lessons learned from Deepwater 
Horizon. This is at a time when the United States has been able to find 
all new reserves of oil and gas onshore. So we are not in a time of a 
shortage of discovery or a shortage of oil reserves. Our domestic 
energy market is being affected by the low price of natural gas, since 
so much of the reserves are just tremendous here in the continental 
United States.
  The most visible change since the Deepwater Horizon spill is the 
division of the Minerals Management Service into the Bureau of Ocean 
Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental 
Enforcement. All of those changes were made as a result of trying to 
improve things after the BP spill, but it doesn't seem to have made any 
major improvements in oversight, according to a report issued by the 
GAO last month.
  So I have come to the floor to try to alert other Senators about the 
importance of preserving the moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of 
Mexico. It makes no sense to put Florida's multibillion-dollar, 
tourism-driven economy at risk.
  And there is something else at risk.
  The Department of Defense has stated numerous times--I have two 
letters from two Republican Secretaries of Defense that say it--that 
drilling and oil-related activities are incompatible with our military 
training and weapons testing. That is the area known as the gulf 
training range. It is in the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida. It is the 
largest testing and training range for the United States military in 
the world.
  Now, in that gulf training range is where the pilots of the F-22 are 
trained. That is at Tyndall Air Force Base. It is where the new F-35 
pilots are trained, by the way, not only for the United States but also 
for the many foreign nations that have bought F-35s. Of course, that is 
essential to our national security.
  That is just pilot training. That doesn't speak of the testing done 
on some of our most sophisticated weapons over hundreds and hundreds of 
miles of restricted airspace.

[[Page S2546]]

  Oh, by the way, when the U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet shut down our 
training in Puerto Rico and the island of Vieques, where do you think a 
lot of that training came to? The Navy still has to train. So they will 
send their squadrons down to Key West Naval Air Station at Boca Chica 
Key. When those pilots and their F-18 Hornets lift off the runway, 
within 2 minutes they are out over the Gulf of Mexico in restricted 
airspace. So they don't spend a lot of fuel and a lot of time to get 
there.
  That is why a lot of our colleagues across the State of Florida on 
the other side of the aisle--in other words, this is bipartisan--have 
weighed in with this administration, urging continued protection for 
the largest military testing and training area in the world.
  Opposition to drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico is bipartisan, 
bicameral--the Senate and House--but so is our opposition to drilling 
off the Atlantic coast.
  Now, let me just distinguish between the two. Years ago, my then-
Republican colleague Senator Mel Martinez and I both offered in law an 
exemption until the year 2022 of any oil drilling off of the coast of 
Florida. It is actually everything east of what is called the Military 
Mission Line. It is virtually the Gulf of Mexico off of Florida. Of 
course we did that for the reasons that I have already stated. That is 
in law up until 2022. But the administration will be coming forth with 
another plan for the 5-year period for oil drilling offshore for the 
years 2023 up through 2028.
  It is my hope that the words of this Senator and the words of our 
bipartisan colleagues from the Florida delegation will convince the 
administration that it is not wise to impede the military's necessary 
training and testing area, not even to speak of the tremendous economic 
deprivation that will come as a result of an oilspill.
  Just think back to the BP spill. Think back to the time when the 
beaches, the sugary-white sands of Pensacola Beach, were completely 
covered with oil. That picture--a very notable picture, a contrast of 
the black oil on top of the white sand--went around the world.

  The winds started blowing the oil from the BP spill off the coast of 
Louisiana. The winds continued to blow it to the east, and so some of 
the oil got into Pensacola Bay, some of the oil started getting into 
Choctawhatchee Bay, and some oil got on the beautiful beaches of Destin 
and Fort Walton Beach. The winds took it as far east as the Panama City 
beaches. There they received basically tar balls on the beach. Then the 
winds reversed and started taking it back to the west, so none of the 
other beaches all the way down the coast of Florida--Clearwater, St. 
Petersburg, on down to the beaches off of Bradenton, Sarasota, Fort 
Myers, Naples, and all the way down to Marco Island--none of those 
beaches received the oil because the wind didn't keep blowing it that 
way. But the entire west coast of Florida lost an entire tourist season 
because our guests, our visitors, the tourists, didn't come because 
they had seen those pictures and they thought that oil was on all of 
our beaches.
  Let me tell you how risky that was. In the Gulf of Mexico, there is 
something known as the Loop Current. It comes through the separation of 
the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and the western end of Cuba and goes up 
into the gulf, and then it loops and comes south in the gulf. It hugs 
the Florida Keys and becomes the Gulf Stream that hugs the east coast 
of Florida. And about midway down the peninsula, it starts to leave the 
coast, follows and parallels the east coast of the United States, and 
eventually goes to Northern Europe. That is the Gulf Stream.
  Had that oilspill been blown south from Louisiana and had the Loop 
Current come enough north, that oilspill would have gotten in the Loop 
Current, and it would have taken it down past the very fragile coral 
reefs of the Florida Keys and right up the beaches of Southeast 
Florida, where there is a huge tourism business.
  By the way, the Gulf Stream hugs the coast in some cases only a mile 
off of the beach.
  That is the hard economic reality of what could happen to Florida's 
tourism industry, not only on the west coast, as it already did in that 
season of the BP oilspill, but what could happen on the east coast of 
Florida too.
  Opposition to drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico is certainly 
bipartisan, but so is the opposition to drilling off the Atlantic 
coast. In the last Congress, Members from both parties joined together 
to file a House companion to the legislation this Senator had filed 
that would prohibit seismic testing in the Atlantic off of Florida. The 
type of seismic airgun testing companies wanted to use to search for 
oil and gas would threaten thousands of marine mammals and fish, 
including endangered species such as the North American right whale. 
The blast from seismic airguns can cause permanent hearing loss for 
whales and dolphins, which disrupts their feeding, calving, and 
breeding.
  In addition to the environmental damage those surveys would cause, 
businesses up and down the Atlantic coast would also suffer from 
drilling activity. Over 35,000 businesses and over 500,000 commercial 
fishing families have registered their opposition to offshore drilling 
in the Atlantic. From fishermen, to hotel owners, to restaurateurs, 
coastal residents and business owners understand it is too dangerous to 
risk the environment and the economy on which they depend.
  There is one unique industry that opposes drilling off the Florida 
east coast. We made the case way back in the 1980s when Secretary of 
the Interior James Watt decided he was going to drill from Cape 
Hatteras, NC, all the way south to Fort Pierce, FL. This Senator was a 
young Congressman then and took this case on and finally convinced the 
Appropriations Committee not to include any funds for the execution and 
offering of those leases. It was a simple fact that that was where we 
were launching our space shuttle then, as well as our military rockets 
from Cape Canaveral, and you simply can't have oil rigs out there and 
be dropping the first stages and the solid rocket boosters from the 
space shuttle.
  As we know, the Cape has come alive with activity--a lot of 
commercial rocketry, as well as the mainstays for our military space 
program. In a year and a half, NASA will launch the largest rocket 
ever, one-third more powerful than the Saturn V, which was the rocket 
that took us to the Moon, and that is the beginning of the Mars 
program, as we are going to Mars with humans. Because of that space 
industry--whether it is commercial or whether it is civilian NASA or 
whether it is military--you simply can't have oil rigs out there in the 
Atlantic where we are dropping the first stages of those rockets. That 
is common sense.
  When President Obama took the Atlantic coast off the table from 2017 
to 2022--that 5-year period planning in the offshore drilling plan--
Floridians finally breathed a deep sigh of relief. They sighed happily 
too. If President Trump intends to open up those areas to drilling, his 
administration will receive and can expect to receive a flood of 
opposition from the folks who know what is going to happen.
  It is this week--and here we are midweek--that we are expecting the 
Trump administration to move forward with an Executive order that would 
ignore the wishes of coastal communities. I want to say that the areas 
off of Florida in the east coast of the Atlantic are very sensitive, as 
I have just outlined, but there is nothing to say that if you have a 
spill off of Georgia or South Carolina, that it can't move south, and 
that starts the problem all over.
  This announcement by the President will be like a big present for the 
oil companies, which, by the way, in areas in the Gulf of Mexico that 
are rich with oil--and there are, in fact, active leases that are not 
producing the oil. Why would they want to grant more leases in areas 
that are important to preserve the Nation's economy as well as our 
military preparedness?
  I hope the President thinks twice before putting Florida's economy at 
such a risk. I hope he refrains from issuing this Executive order, but 
if he doesn't, this Senator and a bipartisan delegation from Florida 
will fight this order.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

[[Page S2547]]

  

  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to urge my 
colleagues in the Senate to oppose the nomination of Alexander Acosta 
for Labor Secretary.
  The test of whether a nominee is qualified to be Labor Secretary is a 
pretty simple one: Will that person stand up for 150 million American 
workers and their families? Mr. Acosta has had multiple opportunities 
in more than 2 months since he was nominated for this position to 
demonstrate that he would stand up for workers, and time after time, he 
has refused.
  Americans deserve to know where a nominee like Mr. Acosta stands on 
key policy matters that will have a powerful impact on the lives of 
working people.
  At Mr. Acosta's confirmation hearing, I asked him where he stood on 
three policy issues that are important to working Americans and their 
families.
  First, will you promise not to delay a rule that will protect 2.3 
million Americans from being poisoned by lethal cancer-causing silica 
on the job?
  Second, will you appeal a Texas court's injunction that has halted 
implementation of a new overtime rule that would give 4.2 million 
Americans a $1.5 billion raise in a single year?
  And third, will you promise not to delay a rule that will stop 
investment advisers from cheating retirees out of an estimated $17 
billion a year?
  Now, these are not tough questions. For most people, these would have 
been total softballs: Will you keep workers from being poisoned, will 
you make sure that employers pay for overtime, and will you make sure 
that investment advisers aren't cheating retirees? Come on. This is the 
very least that a Labor Secretary can do--the very least.
  Mr. Acosta refused to answer a single one of these questions. 
Instead, he bobbed and weaved, stalled and repeated my questions; he 
even insisted that these topics were so complex that he needed more 
time to study them. And it wasn't just my questions that Mr. Acosta 
refused to answer. He spent more than 2 hours ducking, hand-waving, and 
dodging basic questions from committee members--both Democrats and 
Republicans--questions about whether he would commit to stand up for 
workers on issues that profoundly affect their health, their safety, 
and their economic security.
  Mr. Acosta has been so evasive about his views that we still have 
virtually no idea what he will do to help or harm workers if he is 
confirmed for this job.
  The fact that Mr. Acosta isn't willing to step up on easy questions 
and tell us that he will be on the side of workers tells us a lot about 
him--and none of it is good.
  That is particularly troubling, since Mr. Acosta is President Trump's 
nominee, and we can see how President Trump treats workers. In less 
than 100 days on the job, President Trump has managed to kill, weaken, 
or undermine an unprecedented number of protections for working people.
  He signed a bill to make it easier for government contractors to 
steal wages from their employees.
  He signed a bill to make it easier for employers to hide injuries and 
deaths that their workers suffer on the job.
  He signed a bill to keep cities from offering retirement accounts to 
more than 2 million employees who don't have access to a retirement 
plan on the job.
  He delayed a rule protecting workers from lethal, cancer-causing 
beryllium.
  He delayed a rule protecting construction workers from deadly silica.
  And he delayed a rule preventing investment advisers from cheating 
retirees--a rule that will save hard-working Americans about $17 
billion a year.
  That is a pretty long list, and it doesn't even include the 
devastating impact to workers of the President's proposed 20-percent 
cut to the Labor Department funding, which means fewer cops on the beat 
when employers steal wages or force people into unsafe working 
conditions.
  During his campaign, President Trump talked a big game about standing 
up for workers and creating good, high-paying jobs. But if his first 
100 days are any indication, his real plan is to keep corporate profits 
soaring by gutting the rules that American workers depend on to keep 
money in their pockets, food on their tables, and to keep them safe in 
the workplace.
  Unlike President Trump's first failed nominee for this job, Mr. 
Acosta is not openly contemptuous of people who work hard for a living, 
and I suppose we should be thankful for that. But that is not the test 
for Labor Secretary. The test for Labor Secretary is whether this 
person will stand up for American workers.
  Mr. Acosta won't make that commitment, and he has made it perfectly 
clear that he sure won't stand up to President Trump. That is just not 
good enough. Because of this ongoing evasiveness, I have no confidence 
that Mr. Acosta is the right choice for this position, and I urge my 
colleagues to join me in opposing his confirmation.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the role.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cotton). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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